Google has won the latest battle in its long-running dispute
with the US Authors' Guild over its plan to create a digital
library of every book in the world. On 14 November 2013, US Circuit
Judge Denny Chin ruled in favour of Google in the matter of The
Authors' Guild, Inc et al v Google Inc (05 Civ. 8136 (DC)
(SDNY No. 14, 2013)) ("Authors' Guild v
Google"), determining that the Google Books project was
permissible under the "fair use" defence in US copyright
law.
Background
In 2004, Google announced that it was planning to pursue an
ambitious digital books project, termed Google Books. Google Books
consisted of two programs: the Partner Program (initially called
Google Print), encompassing some 2.5 million books displayed with
the permission of book publishers and other rights holders; and the
Library Project, encompassing some 20 million books (to date) which
have been digitised from the collections of a number of major
libraries, notably the New York Public
